Johnson & Johnson and HAX team to foster health device hardware development

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Johnson & Johnson, of BAND-AID and Tylenol (and about half the inventory at your local drugstore) fame, is teaming up with Shenzhen-based accelerator and hardware investor HAX to put some weight behind health startups.

Johnson & Johnson Innovation, the forward-thinking wing of the cursive font conglomerate, is apparently on the lookout for technology ideas aligned with the company’s focus on categories like skin care, baby care, oral care and feminine care, teaming up with HAX to provide startups with the means to develop their products.

The call for HAX Health entries is open now. Interested parties will need to have a good proof of concept, and, perhaps more of a sticking point for many, be able to move to Shenzhen for the entirety of the Spring 2017 program. HAX, for its part, is putting up seed funding, office space, marketing and prototyping help in return for equity, while Johnson & Johnson will be offering access to executives and business development types in hopes of helping to commercialize the thing.

Johnson & Johnson is yet another in a long line of major conglomerates looking to crack the startup space. The company’s CEO recently contributed an op-ed to Time in which he deemed post-post-millennials “Gen H,” due to “the opportunity to make them the healthiest generation in history.” Probably just a coincidence that it sounds like a medicated cream created by one of the company’s competitors.

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Crunchbase

Overview"Johnson & Johnson Innovation is a center to science and business experts to collaborate with innovators to incorporate science into healthcare solutions, including medical device and diagnostic technologies, consumer healthcare products, and pharmaceuticals. It is focused on the advancement of new healthcare solutions in the consumer, pharmaceutical, and medical devices and diagnostics sectors.’
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